Amid partisan strife, Senate passes election bills to bar troops, concealed firearms from polling places

SANTA FE — The Senate voted to approve a politically-tinged election bill on Sunday, sending it on to the House with just a few days left in this year's 30-day legislative session.

The measure, Senate Bill 264, would make it a state-level crime for troops, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, to be deployed to polling places or to block registered voters from casting a ballot.

It passed the Senate on a straight party-line 26-16 vote, with all Democrats voting in favor and all Republicans in opposition. 

Backers of the legislation said the bill was prompted by President Donald Trump's recent calls to "nationalize" elections.

"We have to be prepared," said Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, D-Albuquerque, at one point during Sunday's debate. "We've heard enough in the rhetoric of this president to show we're doing absolutely the right thing." 

But Republicans blasted the measures as misguided, with Senate Minority Leader William Sharer, R-Farmington, calling the bill dealing with election interference a "tin foil hat" law.

"It is clearly another example of Trump Derangement Syndrome," Sharer said, using a term commonly used by Republicans to describe critics of the president. "It's not going to happen here or anywhere else." 

Other Republicans also pointed that nearly all New Mexico county clerks — with the exception of Doña Ana County Clerk Amanda López Askin — have come out in opposition to the bill. 

But Sen. Katy Duhigg, D-Albuquerque, dismissed many of the county clerks' concerns as misguided.

She also expressed fear that an existing federal law that prohibits federal troops from being stationed at polling places, unless such force is necessary to "repel armed enemies" of the United States, might ultimately be ignored by the Trump administration.

"We're at the point we can no longer rely on the federal government to follow its own laws," Duhigg said.

Trump said this month that Republicans should nationalize elections and take over voting oversight in 15 states, though he did not specify to which states he was referring. The president later doubled down on his remarks, describing states as "federal agents" to count votes.

He also recently labeled New Mexico elections as "so corrupt it's incredible," suggesting he would have won the state's five electoral votes were it not for the state's election practices. Trump has lost in New Mexico all three times he has run for president, most recently by 6 percentage points in 2024.

New Mexico is approaching a key election cycle, with all statewide offices up for election in the November general election. All 70 state House seats will also be on the ballot, along with the state's three U.S. House seats and the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Democrat Ben Ray Luján.  

Meanwhile, senators were also poised late Sunday to vote on a separate bill eliminating an existing exemption for licensed concealed-carry permit holders to bring their gun to vote.

That bill, Senate Bill 261, would largely do away with exemptions enshrined in a 2024 bill signed into law by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham that prohibited carrying firearms within 100 feet of polling places — and within 50 feet of ballot drop boxes — in an attempt to address possible voter intimidation.

However, it would leave in place an exemption for law enforcement officers to bring firearms to polling places in certain limited situations, including when summoned by a county clerk or election judge.

Dan Boyd covers state government and politics for the Journal in Santa Fe. Follow him on X at @DanBoydNM or reach him via email at dboyd@abqjournal.com